Apple's iCloud reigning over the greenest data centers on the planet

Clean energy, efficient design, green buildings

Early last year, Apple reports it was "granted regulatory approval to procure renewable energy directly from the wholesale market for our Newark, California, data center through Californias Direct Access program." As a result, Apple is now operating its initial, acquired facility entirely with renewable energy "sourced mostly from California wind."

Apple's water chiller storage system in Maiden, NC

In Maiden, Apple developed a series of energy efficient programs, including sophisticated monitoring of power consumption and cooling requirements. Apple is water cooling server equipment using a massive chilled water storage system (pictured above) that improves "chiller efficiency by transferring 10,400 kWh of electricity consumption from peak to off-peak hours each day," the company notes.

It adds that at night and during cool weather hours, "free" outside air cooling enables it to turn off its water chillers 75 percent of the time. "Cold-air containment pods, with variable-speed fans controlled to exactly match air flow to server requirements from moment to moment," enable "extreme precision in managing cooling distribution."

Apple's solar field in Maiden, NC

Last year, Apple "built the nations largest end userowned, onsite solar photovoltaic array on land surrounding the data center" in Maiden, a 100 acre, 20 megawatt system (shown above) that the company plans to double with an equally large solar field that's expected to be complete by the end of this year.

Apple's Maiden site also completed a new 10 megawatt fuel cell installation (shown below) fueled by landfill biogas, making it also the "largest non-utility fuel cell installation operating anywhere in the country."

Apple's biogas fuel cell system in Maiden, NC

The company worked with Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions to help develop a biogas market within North Carolina to power the fuel cells, which the company cites as "an example of Apple driving improvements in renewable energy availability."

Greenpeace offers no peace for the green

While Apple was developing and building these pioneering green facilities in Maiden, Greenpeace was fundraising with a widely publicized report that specifically attacked Apple for building a data center in what Greenpeace called the "dirty data triangle," implying that construction in North Carolina "indicates a lack of a corporate commitment to clean energy supply for its cloud operations" by the company due to the region's preexisting dependance on on coal and nuclear energy.

Greenpeace issued this seriously flawed Clean Cloud Power Report Card

Greenpeace confidently published a "clear energy index" score that ranked Apple dead last among a series of other companies that operate data centers based on the group's faulty assumptions, as well a giving the company arbitrary "scores" that ranged from Cs to a failing F for its "infrastructure siting."

Greenpeace had incorrectly estimated that Apple's Maiden facility would draw 100 megawatts, arriving at this figure by simply multiplying what the group called a "fairly standard energy efficiency factor" against the amount of money Apple was known to be investing in the facility. It also incorrectly assumed Apple's Prineville facility would be powered by coal, despite the fact that one of the main attractions to the Oregon location is the region's plentiful hydroelectric power generation.

Apple responded to the Greenpeace report with the statement, "our data center in North Carolina will draw about 20 megawatts at full capacity," adding that, "we believe this industry-leading project will make Maiden the greenest data center ever built, and it will be joined next year by our new facility in Oregon running on 100% renewable energy."

Essentially, rather than crediting Apple for investing so much money to design and build innovative, green data centers, Greenpeace jumped to the conclusion that Apple would spend its money building vast facilities of only average performance. Without any fact checking, Greenpeace advertised its flawgic as fact.

After being corrected by Apple, the group then unapologetically bashed the company for spending the extra money to go green, issuing a sarcastic statement that said, "while Apple is well known for making more expensive consumer products, if Apples plans for the $1 billion investment only generates 20MW in power demand, that would be taking the Apple premium to a whole new level."

The group's wildly inaccurate "report" mirrored an earlier "Guide to Greener Electronics" promotion run by Greenpeace in 2006, which similarly ranked Apple near the bottom of its competitors in scores purporting to profile the company's recycling efforts and use of toxics in manufacturing based on criteria that had little to do with reality.

Other tragedies and roadblocks for Apple's green data center plans

Just six months before Greenpeace issued its "Dirty Data Center" smear attack, Apple had suffered the untimely death of Olivier Sanche, the 41 year old head of its global data center operations.

Sanche was a pioneer in data center efficiency and a leader in thinking differently about the planning and construction of data centers in general. Sanche had previously helped eBay to build a LEED Gold data center, and helped set in motion Apple's even more ambitious plans for Maiden.

At his death, a friend noted that Sanche "loved being at Apple as he could do things he could get done no where else. He had vision, passion, and drive to do the right thing, especially for the environment," adding that "one of the sadder parts is Olivier couldnt talk about what he was doing at Apple."

Following the loss of Sanche, in April 2011 Apple was reported to have hired Kevin Timmons, who had previously worked on data centers for Yahoo and then Microsoft.

However, Microsoft's chief executive Steve Ballmer opposed Timmons' departure. After after failing in his negotiations to retain Timmons at Microsoft, Balmer reportedly threatened legal action against Apple over the hire.

As a result, Timmons found work elsewhere and Apple instead hired Scott Noteboom, the former chief of Yahoo's Global Data Center Infrastructure. At Yahoo, Noteboom had been tasked with "managing all aspects of the data center lifecycle— from design, construction, operations, to de-commissions," and had expanded the company's data center growth by a factor of ten.

Innovative green projects in Oregon and Nevada

Apple is continuing to expand its pioneering efforts in Maiden to build sustainable, environmentally sound data centers in other new locations. The company stated that its Prineville data center (shown below, under construction in mid February) has worked with "a number of renewable energy generation providers to develop and purchase power from local wind, solar, and micro-hydro resources."

The company explained that its use of "micro-hydro projects" means it will "generate power from water flowing through irrigation canals, which are already part of the agricultural framework of Oregon." Apple's new Reno data center will also take advantage of local energy efficient attributes, including the site's "excellent natural solar radiation and geothermal resources."

A source familiar with the company's plans told AppleInsider he was particularly impressed with the level of innovation the company was demonstrating in planning the new site, with a focus on minimizing its environmental impact.

Both the Oregon and Nevada sites additionally benefit from dry, moderate climates that enable efficient use of evaporate cooling systems that consume much less energy than conventional air conditioning systems.

Despite Apple's extensive and expensive efforts to build "green," it's still maintaining a very rapid pace of expansion in its data center construction. AppleInsider has learned that the company expects to have massive new facilities up and operating by the end of the year, including vast new buildings that haven't even started in their construction yet.

While there's no end in sight to the growth being seen in iOS device sales and their related Siri, Maps, iTunes and App Store services, the size and scale of Apple's data center expansion suggests that the company is likely to unveil significant new iCloud services this year, perhaps as soon as the Worldwide Developer Conference this summer.

I really like these types of articles. And data centers are interesting to me, mostly because of the humongous numbers. A good thing that there's a guy walking in one of the pictures, that way we get a sense of the size of it all. It's all staggering; wish there were 'open house' days so we can visit one of these biggies. I've only been to the KPN CyberCenter in Amsterdam, and 'wasn't all that impressed'. Granted, small country, so small data center.

It's great to see Apple's thorough approach to such vital issues. As electricity becomes more expensive and climate change's effects become more prominent then issues like this will be at the forefront if we're to continue having usable data centres at all over the next 50 years ...

One thing that they need to do is to enable a search feature for pre purchased apps in their app store. TO be able to search trough by typing into a search of the apps you have purchased. This is good for the consumer. I have six hundered or maybe a thousand apps how am i supposed to find or remember all of them at any given point so sometimes i find my self second guessing myself on whether i purchased an app or not because the app store seems like it doesnt indicate whether youve pre purchased an app until you actually commit to the putchase then a sign pops up stating that you have pre paid for the app. H?ow are you to know before making this purchase that i already own this app and have pre paid for it. This is the major flaw to the consumer if you ask me. You forget and sometimes you buy something you thought you already owned and make a mistake of paying for something you thought was free and pre paid for. Oh well.